The key verdict from a United Nations tribunal in The Hague was delivered 18 months after a 5 year trial of Karadžić, who was facing eleven charges related to war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is sentenced to 40 years in jail. 
 
Prosecutors said that Karadžić was “criminally responsible” for 44-month deadly siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 massacre of more than 8.000 Bosnian men and boys in the Srebrenica enclave. He is convicted for taking UN peace keepers hostage, deporting civilians, murder and attack son on-combatants. He was only cleared of once charge, which is the responsibility for genocide in attacks on other towns and villages where Croats and Bosnians were driven out.
 
The verdicts are the most significant moment in the 23-year existence of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and among the last that it will deliver. Karadžić, who is still considered a hero in Serb controlled parts of Bosnia, was evaded arrest for 13 years until he was captured in Belgrade, Serbia, in 2008. The former Serbian president Slobodan Milošević, who was also waiting on a verdict, died in his cell in The Hague in 2006 before judges could deliver their decision on his case.
 
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was set up in 1993 and has so far indicted 161 suspects, out of which 80 were convicted and only 18 acquitted. Another 13 were sent back to local courts and 36 died or had the indictments withdrawn.